The Steem Life: Terms you should know

The Steem Life is a series of articles that highlight my journey so far and hopefully motivate others.

Previous Episodes:

• Welcome to The Steem Life
• It Starts with an Introduction
• The Lonely Road
• Strategic Spamming and Learning
• You're Adopted

Every society has its own way of communication. Let's call it a language of sorts. In steem community, it's no different. I don't mean an official language, though if I was to guess, I'd say the official language around here is English but I've run into Spanish, Japanese, Korean, French, German and Portuguese speaking communities around here.

That's the beauty of steem, we all speak different languages but here are the words that bind us all together. Call them unifiers, if you may. We'll start from the basics and work our way up

pixabay: editted by me

Steem

Steem is the primary currency used for activities on the steem blockchain. You earn steem through earnings from your posts(blog posts, video or comment). It takes exactly 7 days for your steem to materialise.

You can also earn steem from participation in various contests, events and activities. The more engaging your content, the higher your chance of earning.

Projects on steem blockchain also conduct transactions using steem as the means of exchange.

SBD(Steem Backed Dollar)

SBD is the other currency used on the steem blockchain. Itis not as popular as steem but is used in exactly the same way as steem. It has a different value

Steem Power

Steem power is what determines the value of your upvote. Conversantly, the more steem power you have, the more the value of your reward.

Mana

It determines the amount of activity you can perform on Steem. It is typically dependent on the amount of Steem power you have. You'll typically need around 15sp to ensure you can interact easily.

Upvote

This is the equivalent of "liking" a post on Facebook or Twitter. On Steem community, "Liking" a post whether it is a comment or post gives it value based on how much Steempower you have

Voting Strength

Your voting strenth or voting strenght is somewhat related to your "mana". It replenishes with time.

Downvote

Downvote is the exact opposite of upvote. You're free to use it however you want to use it. All you need to know is that when you downvote a post, you're taking away reward from the post or comment for reason/reasons best known to you. There are no rules.

Resteem

Resteem is the equivalent of retweets. Any post you resteem will be displayed on your dashboard and is irreversible

Curation Trail

A curation trail is giving one account access to voting privileges with your account. Example Curie is a curation trail that upvotes creative content. If you follow the @curie curation trail, your account will upvote whatever they upvote.

Downvote trail

Downvote Trail is basically like Curation Trail, only difference is that this time, your account downvotes whatver a certain account downvotes. Downvotes are very important for Steem community. It prevents bidbot abuse and thanks to #newsteem, we have a very healthy looking Trending page.

Account Automation

You can automate certain actions using Steemauto and other platforms.Actions like claiming your reward, auto upvoting a certain author or making someone your witness proxy are some of the ways. Making someone your witness proxy means you vote for any witness that person votes for

NOTE: I have to stress that you should never put your wallet key anywhere. Only use Dapps verified by Steemconnect or Steem keychain

Previous Episodes:

• Welcome to The Steem Life
• It Starts with an Introduction
• The Lonely Road
• Strategic Spamming and Learning
• You're Adopted

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